


It always rains on the Second Day

by raviiel



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Genre: Existential Angst, Gen, Introspection, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 17:59:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16917615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raviiel/pseuds/raviiel
Summary: Link finds himself in the Second Day, again and again.





	It always rains on the Second Day

Rain. It always rains on the Second Day.

(Second Day, proper. There are Three Days. Always Three Days, never four. The First Day is too alien and wrong. The Third Day is the end. He always finds himself in the Second Day instead.)

This isn't where he's supposed to be, and yet fate has determined otherwise. It does that to him, and he follows the dotted line as he's supposed to—even when it's scratched, smudged, and just plain missing in places.

Anxiety thrums through the town. In every place he stands, in every person he looks at, talks to. The streets drown in it, anxiety falling from the murky sky. It shouts in the mayor's office; men who are at a lost for what to do. It bubbles in a pot of stew; an innkeeper waiting for a lover vanished into thin air. In a letter delivered by a postman who has no time to slowdown. Anxiety permeates, and he's no exception to its inescapableness, like a written law of this dimension.

Like a written law of this dimension, anxiety permeates. Like a written law of this dimension, it always rains on the Second Day.

In another land, in another life, one that slips too far from his mind sometimes, there is no Second Day. There are no _seventy-two hour_ _s_ or people reliving their stifling anxieties at his mercy. He's meant to be _there,_ searching and finding what he was looking for. Instead, he's been swindled and lured into a trap of an endless Three Days with another world to save that has left him stranded.

In the end, there is no one to blame, so he blames himself like Tatl does. (He knows she does, even when she doesn't show it, even when they've gone through Three Days again, and Three Days again.)

_"We're supposed to get moving."_

They've been doing nothing but moving. There's nothing else they can do _but_ move.

_"We don't have a lot of time."_

She says that when it doesn't mean anything. Not a lot of time? What a laugh. Doesn't she know he has the power to keep this world alive forever in a stagnancy of panic?

_"Are you ever going to say anything?"_

His muteness seems to upset her from time to time. There just isn't much to say, because what can he say? He's tired, he's worn out, he isn't sure where to go next. The life he's lived passes all these off as excuses, and for the task at hand, there is no _decent_ excuse. He _has_ to do what needs to be done, or it will be the end.

Urgency bears down on him and Tatl's subtle distaste could be the straw that breaks the camel's back, but he finds time to relax. No—he finds time to _force_ himself to. If he doesn't, he'll lose his mind. This is a lesson hard-learned from the last year (last seven years), most of those months spent dungeon crawling and not knowing if he would make this one out alive or not. She could never understand that he's only a boy with too many years under his worn, brown belt.

So, under a pressure he's no stranger to, he chooses the Second Day to slow down in. Consider it selfish, but the goddess of this land has forsaken it, left it in his hands with the power to turn back time; meaning she must have faith that he can carry through with the fate she bestowed upon him. He'd like to think this small solace is granted to him. Such things are rarely so in his case.

It always rains on the Second Day. It's no light shower. Droplets needle into exposed skin and the sky growls and claps, forcing people inside and washing the streets away of life. No one has time to upturn their eyes and let their pupils dilate in fear at the ghastly behemoth boring down at them, too busy scrambling to safety. They all forget on the Second Day, if only for a little while.

He can forget, too. Or at the very least, put up a pretense of forgetting, even when Tatl rattles in his ear about getting a move on. He thinks it's a token complaint at most since she only does it for a few minutes before huffing and taking shelter inside his hat.

The rain cascades down the haystack awnings and he curls his legs—his small legs, this body—inward and listens to it; the banker toting his services to an empty audience, the occasional townsmen scurrying up or down the winding path of stone, to focused to notice a small blonde boy in green taking reprieve from the biting wet. Why would they? They don't know that he's supposed to be their savior, that he's going to stop that malicious mass of malevolence in the dark sky. That granted, he sits and doesn't feel like much of a savior at all. These days, does he even know what a savior is? A hero?

_"Were you really a hero?"_

That's what they called him. It isn't as if he did much, just as he was told. Doing what has to be done doesn't make a hero.

_"Is all this running around what heroes do?"_

She has no idea.

_"I'm seriously doubting your credibility."_

Tatl speaks like she knows what a hero is. He wishes she would explain it to him. He's without even a sliver of an idea, even when he thought he had one once upon a different life.

Is a hero a body that changed and changed and changed? A child was an adult was a child was a Deku was a Goron was a Zora. His body is one that knows too many forms and now feels all wrong all the time. Is that what a hero is? Someone who isn't allowed to be used to things, to always have any and every semblance of familiarity snatched out from them? Someone who the goddesses see and say, _Go forth, and save this land,_ and send him anyplace they wish?

He comes back to the Second Day again and again and listens to the rain as if the shattering sky will answer him, as if this land's goddess is merciful and will use the rain as her voice. Maybe she does, and she's screaming at him. Maybe she's angry at him for coming back again and again to the Second Day and trying to pull his mind together. Maybe she wanted a hero, but only got him instead, and now it rains on the Second Day because she weeps at this land's inevitable fate.

There's too many triads of days, too many whispers of the dead following him around, too many red eyes watching his every move. The pressure would crack anyone. It must be his test; he's saved a world once, can he do it again? Odds have been stacked against him before, but they reach beyond the sky now. His mettle on the line in Termina—if he saves this land in a pocket of madness, of a terrible fate, then... Surely, he'll have his answer.

No more triads of days. No more Second Day storms.

He peers into the overcast. Breathes in, breathes out. Soon, there won't be a Second Day to come back to. Hero or no hero, he'll make sure of it.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thanks for reading. Majora's Mask is my favorite Legend of Zelda game and I adore it's angst potential. I'd like to write more eventually! I hope you enjoyed, and please let me know if you liked it! :^)


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